diff --git a/docs/design-import-gaps.md b/docs/design-import-gaps.md
index cf20d6c..01e420e 100644
--- a/docs/design-import-gaps.md
+++ b/docs/design-import-gaps.md
@@ -741,3 +741,27 @@ to a 34-pixel rail carrying the chevron that brings it back — a rail rather th
 that vanishes without trace is one people report as lost. The choice is written through to
 `ClientSettings.SessionSidebarOpen` rather than held for the session: it is a decision about how much of the
 window a terminal gets, and one that had to be made again on every launch would not really be on offer.
+
+## v5c-5 — one door to settings, not three
+
+**The user-chip popover keeps its Settings row and has lost Vaults and Preferences.** v5c gave it three, and
+the table above records why: until that pass "Settings" and "Preferences" had been two doors onto the same
+bare screen, so splitting them was a real fix, and Vaults arrived beside them when `VaultsScreen` became a
+settings page too.
+
+Living with it made the shape of the mistake clear. All three opened the same full-window mode and differed
+only in which of its seven pages they landed on — and `SettingsNav`, which lists every one of those pages
+including Vaults and Preferences, is on screen the entire time you are in there. So two of the three rows
+were deep links into a place the third one opens, saving one click and costing a menu that read as though it
+offered three destinations. A menu at the foot of the rail is for getting into settings at all; which page
+you want is a question that has a rail of its own once you are there.
+
+Nothing became unreachable: both pages are one click deeper, from the rail that was always going to be the
+way to them. `NavRailTests` asserts the rows are gone from the markup rather than merely unwired, because a
+row left behind with no handler is a menu entry that does nothing when pressed — which reads as a broken
+application rather than a tidied menu.
+
+Logout stays, and still lands on a page rather than on General: its confirmation card is drawn inline on the
+Account page and nowhere else, so arming it from anywhere else would be a card raised where nobody could see
+it. The vault switches and **New vault** above the divider stay too — they are what the popover is for
+besides settings, and neither is a page of the settings mode.
diff --git a/docs/manual-checks.md b/docs/manual-checks.md
index 836458f..8f10ba2 100644
--- a/docs/manual-checks.md
+++ b/docs/manual-checks.md
@@ -118,15 +118,17 @@ view models — this check is the version with a real connection on the end of i
 
 ### 1.8 Entering and leaving settings mode
 
-From HOSTS, press the user chip at the foot of the nav rail and choose **Settings**. Then repeat from a
-fresh open, choosing **Vaults**, and again choosing **Preferences**.
+From HOSTS, press the user chip at the foot of the nav rail and choose **Settings** — which is the menu's
+only way in now; the Vaults and Preferences rows beside it were folded back into it, because all three
+opened this same mode and differed only in which page they landed on.
 
-**Pass:** each of the three swaps the whole window's chrome — the titlebar becomes the 53px "Back to
-application" bar, the ordinary nav rail is replaced by the 340px SettingsNav, and the status bar and the
-update banner (if either was showing) are both gone. **Settings** lands on General; **Vaults** and
-**Preferences** land on their own pages, each lit in SettingsNav's own list — General/Vaults/Account under
-SETTINGS, Security/Preferences/Groups/Tags under CUSTOMIZE, Logout pinned below both. Click every one of the
-seven rows in turn: each swaps the content column without leaving settings mode or touching the titlebar.
+**Pass:** it swaps the whole window's chrome — the titlebar becomes the 53px "Back to application" bar, the
+ordinary nav rail is replaced by the 340px SettingsNav, and the status bar and the update banner (if either
+was showing) are both gone. It lands on **General**, with SettingsNav's own list beside it —
+General/Vaults/Account under SETTINGS, Security/Preferences/Groups/Tags under CUSTOMIZE, Logout pinned below
+both. Click every one of the seven rows in turn: each swaps the content column without leaving settings mode
+or touching the titlebar, and Vaults and Preferences are among them — which is the whole reason the popover
+no longer carries its own rows for those two.
 
 Now open a terminal, leave it showing, and open Settings from the user chip again. Press **Back to
 application** — or, without touching anything else, press Esc.
@@ -134,7 +136,8 @@ application** — or, without touching anything else, press Esc.
 **Pass:** both return to exactly the screen that was showing before Settings was opened — the terminal,
 still running, rather than HOSTS or anywhere else. Switching between settings pages first (General → Vaults
 → Preferences) does not change what "back" goes back to; only the screen open the moment Settings was
-**first** entered does.
+**first** entered does. The other doors into this mode — the palette, and the Preferences page's own two
+importer rows — behave the same way, so the popover having one row rather than three changes nothing here.
 
 **Failure means:** a return to HOSTS regardless of where Settings was opened from is
 `MainWindowViewModel.settingsReturnScreen` being recaptured on every `EnterSettings` call rather than only on
diff --git a/src/DodoSSH.Client.App/Views/NavRail.axaml b/src/DodoSSH.Client.App/Views/NavRail.axaml
index dc22863..aa64626 100644
--- a/src/DodoSSH.Client.App/Views/NavRail.axaml
+++ b/src/DodoSSH.Client.App/Views/NavRail.axaml
@@ -252,13 +252,23 @@
               <Border Height="1" Margin="11,4" Background="{StaticResource BorderMid}" />
 
               <!--
-                v5c: Settings, Vaults and Preferences now each land on their own page of the settings mode —
-                see MainWindowViewModel.EnterSettings and SettingsView.axaml. Settings opens on General, the
-                mode's own default landing page; Vaults and Preferences open directly on the page they name,
-                which is also what anything that used to navigate to ShellScreen.Vaults or
-                ShellScreen.Preferences now does — see ShowScreen. Three handlers rather than the two rows
-                sharing one before this wave: the mock's Settings area was a family of screens that did not
-                exist yet, and now that it does, "Settings" and "Preferences" are no longer the same click.
+                ◆ ONE ROW, WHERE v5c PUT THREE.
+
+                Settings, Vaults and Preferences all opened the same full-window settings mode — see
+                MainWindowViewModel.EnterSettings and SettingsView.axaml — differing only in which of its
+                seven pages they landed on. Two of the three were therefore deep links into a place the third
+                one opens, and SettingsNav is already on screen the whole time listing every page including
+                those two, so the shortcut saved one click and cost a menu that read as though it offered
+                three destinations.
+
+                It was three rows because settings mode had only just been built out of what used to be two
+                bare ShellScreens: "Settings" and "Preferences" were the same click before that wave, and
+                splitting them was the fix for a real thing. Folding the other two back in is not a return to
+                that state — Vaults and Preferences are pages now, reached from the rail inside settings, and
+                what this menu is for is getting there at all.
+
+                What still lands on a page rather than on General is Logout below, and it has to: its
+                confirmation card is drawn inline on the Account page and nowhere else.
               -->
               <Button Classes="poprow" Click="OnPopoverSettingsPressed">
                 <StackPanel Orientation="Horizontal" Spacing="10">
@@ -268,29 +278,6 @@
                 </StackPanel>
               </Button>
 
-              <!--
-                ◆ THE SAME TREATMENT AS SETTINGS ABOVE AND LOGOUT BELOW, which these two did not have: their
-                label was TextGhost where the other two rows' was Text, so a menu of five equally live
-                destinations drew two of them in the colour this window uses for something switched off. The
-                icons stay one step quieter than the words — the idiom the nav rail's own rows already follow
-                — but "quieter than the word beside it" and "dimmed" are not the same statement.
-              -->
-              <Button Classes="poprow" Click="OnPopoverVaultsPressed">
-                <StackPanel Orientation="Horizontal" Spacing="10">
-                  <TextBlock FontFamily="{StaticResource IconFont}" Text="&#xE84F;" FontSize="12"
-                             Foreground="{StaticResource TextGhost}" />
-                  <TextBlock Text="Vaults" FontSize="10" Foreground="{StaticResource Text}" />
-                </StackPanel>
-              </Button>
-
-              <Button Classes="poprow" Click="OnPopoverPreferencesPressed">
-                <StackPanel Orientation="Horizontal" Spacing="10">
-                  <TextBlock FontFamily="{StaticResource IconFont}" Text="&#xE429;" FontSize="12"
-                             Foreground="{StaticResource TextGhost}" />
-                  <TextBlock Text="Preferences" FontSize="10" Foreground="{StaticResource Text}" />
-                </StackPanel>
-              </Button>
-
               <Border Height="1" Margin="11,4" Background="{StaticResource BorderMid}" />
 
               <!--
diff --git a/src/DodoSSH.Client.App/Views/NavRail.axaml.cs b/src/DodoSSH.Client.App/Views/NavRail.axaml.cs
index df6e415..a14e6f4 100644
--- a/src/DodoSSH.Client.App/Views/NavRail.axaml.cs
+++ b/src/DodoSSH.Client.App/Views/NavRail.axaml.cs
@@ -59,28 +59,6 @@ internal sealed partial class NavRail : UserControl
         }
     }
 
-    /// <summary>Opens settings mode on its Preferences page.</summary>
-    private void OnPopoverPreferencesPressed(object? sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
-    {
-        ClosePopover();
-
-        if (DataContext is MainWindowViewModel shell)
-        {
-            shell.EnterSettingsCommand.Execute(SettingsPage.Preferences);
-        }
-    }
-
-    /// <summary>Opens settings mode on its Vaults page.</summary>
-    private void OnPopoverVaultsPressed(object? sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
-    {
-        ClosePopover();
-
-        if (DataContext is MainWindowViewModel shell)
-        {
-            shell.EnterSettingsCommand.Execute(SettingsPage.Vaults);
-        }
-    }
-
     /// <summary>
     /// Starts a sign-out, through the Account settings page so the confirmation card has somewhere to be
     /// seen — see <see cref="MainWindowViewModel.SignOutFromPopover"/>.
diff --git a/tests/DodoSSH.Client.App.Layout.Tests/NavRailTests.cs b/tests/DodoSSH.Client.App.Layout.Tests/NavRailTests.cs
index 3080823..74e6922 100644
--- a/tests/DodoSSH.Client.App.Layout.Tests/NavRailTests.cs
+++ b/tests/DodoSSH.Client.App.Layout.Tests/NavRailTests.cs
@@ -210,32 +210,38 @@ public sealed class NavRailTests : IAsyncLifetime
     }
 
     /// <summary>
-    /// Settings, Vaults and Preferences each enter settings mode on the page they promise, and shut the
-    /// popover behind them.
+    /// Settings enters settings mode on its landing page, and shuts the popover behind it.
     /// </summary>
     /// <remarks>
-    /// <para>
-    /// v5c: these three used to land on a bare <c>ShellScreen</c> — Settings and Preferences on the very
-    /// same one, since the mock's own Settings area did not exist yet. Now that it does, each opens the
-    /// settings mode on its own page — see <see cref="MainWindowViewModel.EnterSettings"/> — and "Settings"
-    /// and "Preferences" are no longer the same click.
-    /// </para>
-    /// <para>
-    /// Three <see cref="Fact"/>s over one private body rather than a <see cref="Theory"/>: <c>SettingsPage</c>
-    /// is <c>internal</c>, and a public theory method may not carry an internal type in its signature.
-    /// </para>
+    /// v5c gave this menu three navigation rows — Settings, Vaults and Preferences — because settings mode
+    /// had just been built out of what were two bare <c>ShellScreen</c>s, and "Settings" and "Preferences"
+    /// had been the same click until then. All three opened the same mode and differed only in which page
+    /// they landed on, which made two of them deep links into a place the third one opens, past a
+    /// <c>SettingsNav</c> that lists every page anyway. One row now; see <c>NavRail.axaml</c>'s own remark.
     /// </remarks>
     [Fact]
     public Task ThePopoversSettingsRow_EntersSettingsOnGeneralAndClosesThePopover() =>
         APopoverRowLandsOnAsync("Settings", SettingsPage.General);
 
+    /// <summary>
+    /// The two rows that were folded into it are gone from the menu rather than merely unwired.
+    /// </summary>
+    /// <remarks>
+    /// Worth a test of its own because the failure it guards is silent: a row left in the markup and
+    /// stripped of its handler is a menu entry that does nothing when pressed, which reads as a broken
+    /// application rather than as a tidied menu. Both destinations are still reachable — one click deeper,
+    /// from <c>SettingsNav</c> — which is the whole argument for removing them from here.
+    /// </remarks>
     [Fact]
-    public Task ThePopoversVaultsRow_EntersSettingsOnVaultsAndClosesThePopover() =>
-        APopoverRowLandsOnAsync("Vaults", SettingsPage.Vaults);
+    public Task ThePopoverNoLongerOffersVaultsOrPreferencesOfItsOwn() =>
+        OnTheRailAsync((rail, window) =>
+        {
+            Click(UserChip(rail), window);
 
-    [Fact]
-    public Task ThePopoversPreferencesRow_EntersSettingsOnPreferencesAndClosesThePopover() =>
-        APopoverRowLandsOnAsync("Preferences", SettingsPage.Preferences);
+            PopoverRows(window).ShouldNotContain("Vaults");
+            PopoverRows(window).ShouldNotContain("Preferences");
+            PopoverRows(window).ShouldContain("Settings");
+        });
 
     private Task APopoverRowLandsOnAsync(string label, SettingsPage target) =>
         OnTheRailAsync((rail, window) =>
@@ -369,6 +375,24 @@ public sealed class NavRailTests : IAsyncLifetime
                     .OfType<TextBlock>()
                     .Any(text => string.Equals(text.Text, label, StringComparison.Ordinal)));
 
+    /// <summary>
+    /// Every word the open popover offers as a place to go.
+    /// </summary>
+    /// <remarks>
+    /// The vault switches are excluded by their data context rather than by their label, because a vault is
+    /// free to be called anything — including "Vaults" — and a test asserting that a menu entry is absent
+    /// must not be satisfiable or defeatable by what somebody named a vault.
+    /// </remarks>
+    private static IReadOnlyList<string> PopoverRows(Visual window) =>
+        [.. window.GetVisualDescendants()
+            .OfType<Button>()
+            .Where(button => button.Classes.Contains("poprow")
+                && button.DataContext is not VaultToggleViewModel)
+            .SelectMany(button => button.GetVisualDescendants().OfType<TextBlock>())
+            .Select(text => text.Text)
+            .Where(text => !string.IsNullOrEmpty(text))
+            .Select(text => text!)];
+
     /// <summary>Whether a vault row's magenta check square is drawn, for whether it is currently shown.</summary>
     private static bool HasVisibleCheck(Button row) =>
         row.GetVisualDescendants().OfType<Border>().Any(